Abbey's 1st Surgery & 2 Week Post Op Update

We brought Abbey home on Feb 17 after having her surgery on her left leg then staying the night at the vet.  I was astounded at how well she was walking right from the get go.  Odessa only had the fish line surgery that repaired her tendon.  Abbey's was basically a knee rebalancing that included titanium plates that screwed into her bones.  Odessa wouldn't put any weight on her leg for maybe a week after each surgery but Abbey was able to get up the front steps into the house without much trouble at all.  She was already bearing a bit of weight on it as well.  The vet made the comment that he had never seen a dog come out of that surgery walking like that so quickly.  She had an epidural and two nerve blocks that took a while to wear off but even the next day after they did, she was still bearing a fair bit of weight on it.

By the weekend she was acting just like her old self.  I left the room for a few minutes and she took it upon herself to climb up on the sofa (her normal spot) for a nap then later in the day got by us through the baby gate and let herself up the stairs with no trouble at all.








Her incision was interesting.  All internal stitches so we didn't have to worry as much about her licking and doing any damage to it.  We did leave her in the cone of shame any time we weren't keeping an eye on her just to be on the safe side.  She is a bit of a compulsive chewer as it is so I wanted to air on the side of caution.  But we also didn't have to worry about stitch removal or anything like that.  She did manage to make a spot bleed/leak clear goo at one point so she was stuck in the cone full time for several more days until the scabs healed all the way and she couldn't open them up again.

The surgeon had us come back 2 weeks after the surgery for a quick check up just to make sure there were no signs of any internal or external infections and that she was making progress regaining her mobility.  He said she looks just fine and was happy with her range of motion.  He said that he will just do her final x-rays for that knee when he does the ones for her other knee so she doesn't have to deal with getting them done twice.

Swelling was an issue the first few days.  They gave us this awesome cold pack called a ColPac to help with that then we are to use it after doing any of her little exercises to help with any swelling then.  It is filled with a thick gel so while it gets really cold, it doesn't freeze solid so you can wrap it around her leg easily.  We do wrap it in a dish towel so it wasn't too cold on her skin since they shaved her fur.

Thursday and Friday the swelling was at its worst.  Her ankle swelled to the size of a small grapefruit and her knee was covered in bruises and was hard to the touch.  Buy by Sunday, all of the swelling was completely gone as were all the bruises.

This was Thursday evening bruising and swelling

I will have a video up before she goes into her second surgery of her progress walking.


The cone we have is a Comfy Cone which we LOVE.  I got this for Odessa when she had her first knee surgery.  I hate those cheapo plastic ones the vet has as they can cut your skin if they get you with the edge of it and it's just difficult for them to maneuver around in it.  The Comfy Cone is foam so it has a lot of give to it.  The dog can't get around it to get at their wound but they can push down to get a snack or drink from their bowls.  It also doesn't seem to get hung on things like the sofa cushions or whatever as easily.  We've used ours with Odessa many times and it fits Abbey pretty well too so now it's her turn.  Petsmart carries them (or did when I was looking for one) but they didn't have the size we needed so I ordered it off of Amazon for about $30 for the Extra Large size.  Considering how much use we have gotten out of it, has been more than worth the price.


$$ Update $$:

So we paid for the first knee when we picked her up after the surgery.  We paid $2549.25 for this knee which was just a hair more than the estimate which was $2527.11.

Be sure to check us out on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat for more updates and posts!


Thanks guys!!